One of the great things about social media is how it can connect you with thousands of people you would otherwise never know. This makes it easy to  be exposed to new things, learn from them and become more informed and smarter about business every single day. Indeed, social media has helped to vastly improve my knowledge base on so many things digital. And I owe it to the people I’ve connected with. Thanks.

But like so many wonderful things there is a dark side. Too much champagne creates obnoxious dinner guests. And too many followers  can create obnoxious tweeters, bloggers and human beings.

My four year old love to say, “that’s not how you do it. Let me show you how to do it” after figuring something out on her own or being shown something by her pre-k teacher. She wells with pride and is hoping for a pat on the back and a little admiration. I’m sure this reminds you of a blogger or two that is looking for a little more than an opportunity to share.

Fortunately, this is as far as it goes for my daughter. You see her audience has yet grow — it’s still limited to her immediate family. So far she has yet  to build 6,000 twitter followers and then morph into the the obnoxious, Rock Star, social media maven.

But frankly we all need to be conscious of loosing perspective once we get a little following. So how can you recognize if you’re suffering from the Rock Star Complex?

1. You constantly preach transparency but you don’t respond to tweets or comments on your blog because you’re so gosh darn busy.
2. You have an auto-play video of yourself on your blog that illustrates how great you are.
3. You refer to yourself in the royal “we.”
4. You’re constantly writing about how great you are rather than sharing great information.
5. You spend more than minute talking about yourself as a brand and not your business.
6. You call business trips “road trips” or even “tours.”
7. You think about how you will blog about a job more than how you will deliver value to your customers.
8. You think you’re more important and smarter than your readers.
9. Your original profession has been subsumed by the marketing of you,  your blog, your e-books, and your workshops.
10. You’re thinking of hiring a personal assistant.

I haven’t watched much of American Idol. I’m really not a fan of the signing but I am a fan of using social media to predict popularity contests. So lets give it a go.

First lets look at sentiment. Seems my taste for indie rock (and not pop ballads) isn’t shared by everyone. Sentiment for these folks is pretty darn positive. And positive in almost the exact same numbers. Bowersox get’ one percentage point on DeWyze. And negative sentiment is exactly the same.

But the story doesn’t end there. Since this is a popularity contest, the winner is going to need more buzz about them.

And it looks like over time DeWyze has had an advantage over Bowersox. And last week DeWyze was able make significant gains.

Looking at the percentage of posts ratio, in combination with a tie on sentiment, I think this is pretty safe call for DeWyze. So I’m going on record here for DeWyze.

Note: A few weeks ago a published a review of desktop Twitter apps.

Desktop Twitter apps are great but browser based clients are pretty darn robust these days too and certainly worthy of your consideration. A colleague of mine was recently having problems with her AIR app functioning properly and switched to a browser one. She is now tweeting problem free.

Browser apps can also have a lot of functionality built into them since they’re not limited by an application on your computer. Here are my top five:

Hootsuite

HootSuite is one of the most robust platforms for updating and monitoring your social networks. You can update Twitter, Linkedin, and Facebook from with the same browser window. It also has its own link shortener ow.ly that helps you track how many people are clicking your links. And if you use their link shortener, it will integrate statistics.

One of my favorite features is that it will let you schedule tweets for later. So if you want to Tweet about the blog article you just finished at 2 AM, you can write the tweet then but automatically send it later. Try and do that with a desktop app.

Seesmic Web

Seesimc Web is similar to their desktop application but lives within a browser window. It’s a relatively new offering from them and doesn’t have as many functions as Hootsuite or even their own desktop app. But my guess it that it will get more features over time. So this is certainly an app to watch.

CoTweet

CoTweet is a browser based with a focus on corporate users. The features are built around the idea of multiple users. This means multiple users can tweet to the same account and team members can even assign tasks to each other. CoTweet’s functions add up to a great Twitter CRM system but I wouldn’t recommend it for someone who’s just tweeting for or by themselves.

Brizzley

I dig Brizzly. Unlike most of the solutions, Brizzly actually loads Twitter content right into your browser window. This makes it easy to scan Twitter photos right in the same browser window. Brizzley also has a nice Facebook integration. Brizzly doesn’t try to do everything, rather it focuses on just being easy to use.

Flock

An interesting way to use Twitter is when it’s integrated right into your browser with Flock. Flock does a lot of interesting things I’m not really sure I need my browser to do. Plus I’m kind of addicted to all my Firefox plug-ins.  But Flock is an interesting tool none-the-less. And hey, it might be something you’d like to try.

OK, that’s my list. Did I leave something important out? Let me know and I’ll add it.

I know people who are bright, energetic and engaged in person but don’t come off that way online. They have Facebook profiles that are never updated and Twitter accounts they haven’t posted to in weeks. Or worse, a blog that has gone entirely dark for months.

Sure it’s hard to keep up with but with a little planning it is completely possible to keep it real online 24/7. Here are a few things you can do to plan for it:

1. Post to your blog at least weekly. Try to Tweet everyday. If you’re using Facebook for business try and do something there daily. You don’t have to post everyday – commenting on other people’s posts goes a long way.
2. Exploit auto-posting features. Most blogging platforms, like WordPress allow you to set a later publication date. If you know you’re going have a busy week, you can set it and forget it.
3. Put time on your calender for social media activities. Most people put other important things on their calendar but don’t bother to for social media.
4. Use mobile apps. Take a few minutes on the train or waiting for a meeting to hammer out a post or send a couple tweets.
5. Write non-time-sensitive material and leave it on the back burner. Then pull the material out when things get busy.
6. If you’re maintaining a business profile don’t be shy about delegating all or a portion of the responsibility.  You may find one of your employees is more comfortable in the space than you are. It can be better when someone higher in the food chain takes responsibility for social media activities but if you can’t maintain an active presence, it’s better to go ahead and delegate.

Sure, your offline existence is more important than your online one – no doubt. But the two are increasingly intertwined – so it makes sense to be your best both off and online.

If you’re still using Twitter from Twitter.com, I have to say you’re making it hard on yourself and you’re not getting all you can out of it. Desktop apps are one way to make it easier to track followers, respond, organize and monitor your profile or brand.

I usually make an effort to try out Twitter clients as I learn about them. I won’t be reviewing everyone in this post but I will review most of the major ones.

Tweetdeck

I really like Tweetdeck’s large and easy on the eyes user interface. It’s great for watching and posting to multiple accounts. For six months, I’d say it was my favorite app for both mobile and desktop hands down.

Tweetdeck features support for Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, and Linkedin. This makes it easy to keep up-to-date with these social networks and post to them without logging in to multiple Web pages.

From Tweetdeck, you can post regular tweets, pictures, or even video, via 12seconds.

It also incorporates bit.ly and other popular link shortening services and can integrate with your account. If you’re a freak about metrics this is super handy.

Many people use Tweetdeck just for it’s search function which streams in your search into a handy dandy column. For example, you can enter your brand name and watch it aggregate results right in the column. It’s like having a social media dashboard rather than just a Twitter tool.

Seesmic Desktop

Seesmic Desktop offers similar functionality to Tweetdeck. Choosing between these two is mainly a decision about what interface you are most comfortable with. However, Seesmic appears to be moving to improve their desktop app. They recently bought Ping.fm a tool which allows you to basically post anywhere you want to at once. This technology will most likely find its way into Seesmic Desktop soon and make it even more powerful.

If you’re a Windows user, Seesmic for Windows is a native application which should provide better performance for you over the Adobe air application Mac and Linux users get.

Destroy Twitter

Has a very nice UI and includes the option to use themes to customize it’s look. I really like using this app and it currently incorporates groups. Destroy 2.0 will also feature lists in the future which will make it a really nice option. However right now without multiple accounts and no Twitter lists, I wouldn’t recommended it for a power user.

Tweetie

A very nice functioning Mac twitter desktop app with a great user interface brought to you by the people who make one of the most popular iPhone apps. Unfortunately it doesn’t offer lists or groups in the desktop version. This makes it more or less useless for me. But if you have a much smaller lists of friends and followers maybe you it will work for you.

Skimmer

Skimmer was created by ad agency Fallon. Like the marketing coming out of the Minneapolis agency, it’s a slick and cleaver. I really dig the look and feel. It renders photos and YouTube video beautifully. I’m a little less stoked with it’s Twitter feature set. But then again it’s hard to do everything perfectly.

Twitteriffic, Twinja and Mac Lounge

A few more Mac apps. None of these appear to have been updated lately and don’t support lists. Twitterific makes a popular iPhone app but their desktop app feels neglected compared with the constant updates and rich features of Tweetdeck.  Mac Lounge and Twinja both are are fine basic apps but offer little in the way of features compared to the more popular

Thwirl

A minimalist but very functional desktop Twitter app. If you like to post to lots of different networks this may be the application for you. It’s the opposite of Tweetdeck in that it occupies very little of your screen yet does a lot with that space. You can post to Twitter, laconi.ca, Friendfeed and Seesmic Video accounts and integrate several url shortners. Thwirl was bought by Seesmic and updates have slowed, none in the last several months. So while it’s currently a pretty neat tool, I wouldn’t bet on it being around forever.

Sobees and DigiTweet

Sobees and DigiTweet are Twitter desktop application to consider if you’re a Windows user — I’m not so I haven’t tried them. Sobees does support Facebook, Myspace and Linkedin as well and looks to have the richer feature set. Both are native .Net applications.

A word about Adobe Air

Most of these programs function within Adobe Air, an amazing platform that allows programmers the ability to create desktop applications that function much like mobile apps. Adobe Air is more or less a desktop version of Flash — I’m not a tech guy so excuse me if I’m over simplifying. This provides robust functionality but not always the best performance to weight ratio. Should a Twitter client really be using 264 mb of my real memory? Maybe. And if you’ve got a high performance machine with tons of ram and disk space, no worries. But if you’re running an older machine maybe a browser based client is more to your liking.

Browser Apps

Browser based twitter clients are pretty darn robust these days too. And you should consider them as well. I’ll be posting soon on some major ones shortly. As well as mobile apps.

Some people love to rant. Even more people love to rant on a blog. Some blogs were even created for people to rant about politics, the price of milk, or even their ex’s grooming habits.

In the non-digital world, people find that kind of behavior repulsive. They simply don’t want to be around people that are negative. It’s true online too, don’t believe me? Read this great post by Brian Solis on the subject, he’s got numbers to prove people don’t want to hear about your problems. So if you blog or tweet about your brand, your business, or even your personal brand and you use negative language, you’ve got a problem.

Top 10 reasons people don’t want to hear your rant:

1. People read blogs because they’re looking for helpful opinions. Ranting only helps you vent.
2. You’re readers will tune you out.
3. People will think you’re a hot head. Do you really want clients or a potential employer to think you’re a hot head?
4. You’re only as  funny as Lewis Black in your mind. You’re readers won’t get it.
5. Most people are put in timeout for having tantrums offline.
6. The squeaky wheel gets the grease but not page hits or followers.
7. No one respects a complainer.
8. Negative advertising doesn’t work for a leader.
9. Even your mom hates it when you whine.
10. A successful blog champions solutions not problems.

So next time you feel like ranting, call a friend instead. Then sit down and think about how you can flip your rant on it’s head and write about solutions to the problem that has you so worked up. Channel the negative energy and do something positive with it instead. You’re readers will thank you for it by reading the post instead of tuning you out.

A few months ago a client asked for a cheat sheet on how to uses social media tools. Here’s more or less what I gave them on Twitter. See something important missing, let me know and I’ll add it. Note: This list isn’t a substitute for a strategy.

1. Follow some good tweeters to get a feel for it and find a voice you feel comfortable using. There is no one right voice.  @chrisbrogan, @postachio, @comcastcares, @delloutlet and @lancearmstrong are examples of popular tweeters using very different styles.
2. Understand frequent users will never visit your twitter.com page. Your brand/identity must be in your communication or where you send users.
3. Use Bit.ly or other tool to shorten links and collect data.
4. Use CoTweet or HootSuite to optimize your workflow and track analytics.
5. Engagement is earned with time and by providing value. You must be dedicate significant time to get any value from it.
6. Be helpful is the Golden Rule of social media.
7. Use Twitter lists to manage the information flow.
8. Add to conversations that are already happening instead of expecting them to come to you.
9. Re-tweet often – people like to be patted on the back. Add a comment/value to your re-tweet.
10. Try and reply to @ messages, but you don’t have to reply to everyone
11. Try and thank people for re-tweeting.
12. Ignore the “What are you doing?” question and answer more interesting questions like, “What interests you right now? What did you just discover? What are you passionate about? What is something positive you can share?”
13. Frequency is key. Don’t feel bad for tweeting the same message again if it’s valuable.
14. A message will be viewed on someone’s Twitter page or Twitter client only if they happen to be looking at it at the time when you Tweet. And you probably have a lot of competition for attention. Again, frequency is key.
15. Tweet about other people you respect – no one likes anyone who only talks about themselves.
16. Give followers somewhere to go, some news, or something to do or read. There’s no interaction without action.
17. People will follow your tweets if you provide them what they find valuable. Usually that’s news, inside information, entertainment or deals.
18. Use search engines or Twitter client to create searches on relevant topics and your brand.
19. Use Google Alerts.
20. Find other users with similar interests and follow them, get a feel for what they’re doing and engage them.
21. If possible, have more than one tweeter.
22. Obviously, be ethical and transparent.
23. Let people know you’re on Twitter by putting your username on e-mail signatures, web sites, blogs and offline communications.
24. Try and follow people back who seem legitimate; this gives them the opportunity to direct-message you…which could be important.
25. Don’t be boring. Don’t just Tweet PR language or links to press releases. This is not a push medium.
26. Don’t treat it like a broadcast mechanism for advertising.
27. Don’t read every tweet; you’ll go mad.

Update: If you found this list useful, check out my Facebook Fan Page tips for business users.

So you have already drunk the Twitter Koolaide. You’ve been tweeting awhile and now you have a few hundred followers and are following more people than you can keep track of using Twitter.com on your browser. And you’re beginning to feel that you’re probably not getting all that you could out of your Twitter experience because of an information nozzle that is blasting so hard you’ve lost control of what you’re reading.

Now you’re wondering, “do I need to unfollow a hundred people because I’m not too interested in everything they’re tweeting?” They all seemed so interesting at first but now — not so much. Will they unfollow me if I unfollow them? Probably. And that may be OK. But if you selfishly want to hang on to them and not hurt anyone’s feelings, there’s a solution.

Thankfully, twitter now has a built in tool to help this problem: Twitter Lists. Lists allow you to group your favorite Tweeters into a single browser window. You can even create groups for specific topics. So if you’re interested in learning about a particular news story, click the “news” list you created of pundits or journalists. Or if maketing is your bag, create one of marketing professionals you respect.

You can also look at other people’s lists and get a feel if your missing something.

If you use a tool like Hootsuite, Tweetdeck, or Seesmic these lists can be integrated into your desktop tool or iPhone app. (CoTweet is also an excellent tool but focused on enterprise users. If that’s you, I highly recommend it.)

If you use Seesmic of Tweetdeck (Hootsuite is phasing out groups and wants you to use Twitter’s lists) you can use groups to create columns to easily scan and not have them part of your actual Twitter account. I find Tweetdecks function to be easy to use. And since I manage three accounts, ease of use is extremely important to me.

These tools should help you make more sense out of Twitter stream with a bit of time spent getting caught up sorting. I’m constantly tweaking my Tweetdeck groups to try and make sure I have the best information stream possible.

One problem lists doesn’t solve is the DM conundrum. I find that I’m consistently auto DM’d so I tend not to pay much attention to what’s in my DM inbox. I could just unfollow anyone that does that but I’m conscious that some people don’t know they’re being annoying by sending automated messages, so I’m giving everyone the benefit of doubt.

The things that will get people unfollowed by me is spamming me with porn or otherwise offensive stuff and auto blasting me with 10 tweets at a time in attempt to capitalize my stream. I’d rather tweeters be interesting than annoying.

Hope these tips help. If anyone has any to add please add to comments.

Engagement is a term that has been used so much in the last couple years by marketers it’s starting to loose it’s meaning. It’s become a shorthand for do something “social.”

But engagement at it’s best is an emotional involvement or commitment between two parties. Unfortunately, commitment is something many marketers only expect of their customers, not themselves. They’re only committed to pushing the message out there and not listening to what the other person has to say. Fortunately for marketers customers are used to being treated this way. That’s how I feel every time I deal with the phone company or a credit card company.

So why are these companies getting into social media in the first place? Many see it as cheap media. But many are well meaning, want real interaction but simply don’t understand the time commitment associated with a true two-way conversation. And they also don’t see (or can’t advocate up the chain) the customer service, sales, or PR value yet.

So if you want real engagement, I suggest you not take “baby steps” but take measured steps into social media and not leaps. Leaps can lead to instant scalability problems and cause confusion marketers. Frankly, the people who work in marketing and PR are not used to talking to customers on a one-to-one scale. So what do you do?

Step one: Listen.

Step two: Develop a plan for engagement based on goals and what you’ve heard.

Step three: Create a presence where your largest group of customers can reach you the easily (fish where the fish are). And start a conversation.

Concentrate on this third step for a month or so before launching a Twitter presence, a Friend Feed, a Youtube Channel and so on.

We find that this is plenty for most companies at first. Even if you are just launching a Facebook fan page, you can generate significant traffic to your corporate site and learn a lot about engaging your customers quickly. This is a lot better situation than starting a social media “experiment” with an instant scalability problem. From here it will be easier to transition to real engagement with customers rather than falling back into the same old push mentality we all used to be so comfortable with.

Most predictions are either easy, safe, or just wrong. So why not add a few more to the list? I dare you to go on the record on which ones of these are wrong.

1. Mobile Web will become even bigger.
2. The kids will continue to text at an alarming rate — it’s private you know.
3. Social media will become more important to businesses — especially B2B, entertainment, and high-involvement products and services.
4. Television will still be very important to consumer marketing.
5. SEO will still not be understood by many ad agencies, nor will they care.
6. Flash will still be over used.
7. Bad ads will be ignored even more easily.
8. Tribilization of users, listeners, and viewers will further fragment audiences and confuse marketers.
9. Boomer execs will struggle with understanding social media, much less understanding how to implement it strategically.
10. “Guru” will become a four letter word when put after “social media.”
11. Clients will still not buy your best ideas but you’ll still be pressured to present it.
12. Agencies will be slow to hire, even people they need.
13. Web video will continue to blow up and frustrate old school production companies trying to make a profit.
14. Begrudgingly marketing executives will accept that Twitter isn’t a fad but still think it’s stupid — then turn on their NASCAR.
15. “Microsite” will be removed from the urban dictionary for lack of coolness.
16. Foursquare will create real returns for smart business and some guys in New York.
17. That Apple tablet will finally appear and so will another iPhone that will make you want to throw away your lame and old 3GS.
18. Interactive agencies will leverage their bandwidth and expertise to wrench away agency of record agreements from traditional shops — especially in B2B and tech categories.
19. Very-small agencies will be at a disadvantage pitching accounts since most clients will be looking to see strong and expansive digital capabilities from their agency partners.
20. Very-large agencies will have a hard time changing course to create true digital capabilities and still meet the new, tightwad, cost expectations of clients.
21. Agency people will still be prattling about how cool their iPhones are.
22. Same agency people will still be presenting “iPhone App” ideas to clients using Blackberries, Palms, Microsoft, and Google smart phones.
23. 13% of Art directors will burn out and start presenting the same layouts in different colors for all concepts, clients, and mediums.
24. Salaries will remain flat.
25. Your boss or client will buy a Porsche but feel the need to make excuses about how it was too good a deal to pass up.